![]() The inclusion of Irene Adler is part of an obvious Hollywood-style formula where heroes must always have love interests, and Rachel McAdams plays her all wrong at any rate. ![]() Other things will annoy the Sherlock Holmes purist as well. Granted, his accent is excellent, but you simply can't look at him and be sold on the fact that he's supposed to be British. You would also be wise to cast somebody who is not as distinctively American as Robert Downey, Jr. The bottom line is this: if you're going to make a movie about Sherlock Holmes-and even go so far as to name the movie Sherlock Holmes-the movie should be about Sherlock Holmes, a well-established and rich character who is most definitely not some half-crazed Batman-hybrid with deliberate exagerrations and omissions. In short, depicting Sherlock Holmes without his iconic hat is like depicting Indiana Jones without his beat-up fedora. ![]() ![]() Additionally, many of the original illustrations for the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sidney Paget and Frederic Dorr Steele, approved by Conan Doyle himself, have Holmes wearing a deerstalker cap. While the word "deerstalker" never appears in Conan Doyle's work, in "The Adventure of Silver Blaze," Holmes is described wearing a "ear-flapped travelling cap," and in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery," he is described wearing "a close-fitting cloth cap." You'd be hard-pressed to find anything other than a deerstalker cap that matches those descriptions in the time period of those stories. Director Guy Ritchie has mentioned this distinctive piece of clothing, but has implied that it is an invention created purely on film and is never mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Which brings me to the deerstalker cap worn by nearly every film iteration of Sherlock Holmes except this one. Imagine Sherlock Holmes without a deerstalker, and all you're thinking about is nothing Additionally, Robert Downey plays the character with far too much crazy, taking Holmes from an eccentric genius into a dysfunctional and certifiable lunatic who uses drugs far more frequently and recreationally than the literary Holmes ever did. The Holmes in this movie is more like Batman or Jack Bauer in these moments, and while I love Batman and Jack Bauer, that is not Sherlock Holmes. While the literary Holmes is trained in boxing and fencing, he is never the brawny martial arts master who twirls nightsticks like nunchucks and plans out how to stealthily incapacitate targets with well-placed blows. Still, despite these homages, the writers are all too eager to distance their characters from Conan Doyle's. Some of the best lines of dialogue in the movie are ripped right out of Conan Doyle's works, as in "One begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts" (which comes from "A Scandal in Bohemia") and "Crime is common, logic is rare" ("The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"). The interplay between Holmes and Watson is more interesting than it usually is on film, and there are plenty of references to the original stories, from the obscure to the obvious. There are a few things the movie gets right. I am not averse to the idea of taking a fresh approach to the character and his stories and pulling our collective impression of the man away from the Basil Rathbone charicature, but this film seems to be trying to turn Holmes into a manic-depressive action hero instead of the eccentric supersleuth Conan Doyle created. Therefore, it was with great trepidation that I sat down and watched the recent film "reboot," Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Robert Downey, Jr. I grew up reading his many adventures, and this was in no small part thanks to my father, who is best described as a Sherlock Holmes superfan. He instilled in me a respect for logic and skepticism, a love of mystery, and an appreciation for eccentricity. Sherlock Holmes is one of the greatest literary figures who inspired me as a child.
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